Letter: Illinois’ support for veterans lagging

The Illinois Veteran Grant program is an education entitlement established in 1967 for Illinois veterans.

Recent reporting on state funding levels of the program illustrates several “beefs” many citizens have with those who run our state government, including chronic mismatches between politicians’ words and deeds, unfunded mandates increasingly thrust by the state onto lower governmental entities and state government’s habit of shortchanging some obligations in the budget to shift funds to more politically advantageous areas.

Specifically, between 2007 and 2010, House Speaker Michael Madigan and Gov. Rod Blagojevich appropriated only 49 percent of the IVG claims incurred, leaving 51 percent to be paid by various Illinois higher educational institutions serving those veterans.

It’s gotten much worse. Between 2011 and 2015, Madigan and Gov. Pat Quinn appropriated less than 4 percent of the IVG claims incurred, leaving 96 percent to be paid by educational institutions.

This cost-shift from the state to individual educational institutions under Madigan-Blagojevich averaged $14.7 million annually. Under Madigan-Quinn it has averaged $27.4 million annually.

These amounts are, unfortunately, mere round-off errors compared to the massive, ongoing Illinois Medicaid fraud partially uncovered by the independent public investigation that Quinn halted, so our political leadership might almost be forgiven for perpetrating such tiny IVG diversions.

Still, this example may interest those who support Illinois veterans and also the voting public, which no doubt will be told in coming months how highly the Madigan-Quinn Democratic forces care about supporting veterans.